Police: Concord man charged with assaulting girl in bedroom being investigated in similar case

The Concord man recently charged with sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl as she slept is now being investigated in connection to a similar incident that happened at a residence about a block away in March, according to the police. A prosecutor said yesterday that both those homes are near the building where 42-year-old David Mandigo takes part in sex offender counseling.

Mandigo, who is being held on $100,000 cash bail after his arraignment yesterday, was arrested Friday, less than 12 hours after a woman at a North State Street home reported finding a man in her daughter’s bedroom just before 4 a.m. According to a police affidavit, the man was kneeling at the girl’s bed and had both hands resting on her buttocks beneath the sheets.

When he saw the mother in the doorway, he looked at her, said “Oh my God” and pulled his hands away, the police said.

“The mother stated that the man then got up and walked past her to the hallway without saying another word,” a detective wrote in his arrest affidavit. “She stated that he went down the stairs and out of her sight.”

Mandigo, who has been arrested before for indecent exposure and stalking, was taken into custody after fingerprints found on an open first-floor window were quickly matched with ones officials already had on file for him, according to the police.

The police said the incident bears resemblance to one on Washington Street, about a block away, in March. In that case, a mother found that the screen had been removed from a window in her 15-year-old daughter’s bedroom, Concord police Lt. Timothy O’Malley said. The woman thought it was odd but wasn’t alarmed and didn’t notify the police at that time, he said.

Then a week later, the daughter awoke about 4:45 a.m. after feeling a draft in her room. O’Malley said she called for her mother to ask if she had opened the window. The mother said she hadn’t, then saw a person dressed in all black outside the home, O’Malley said.

The woman went to another window to get a better look, but the person was gone when she looked outside again. That case has been under investigation since March, and O’Malley said that because of the similarities between it and last week’s home invasion the police will “certainly be taking a closer look at Mr. Mandigo as a possible suspect.”

Mandigo was arraigned yesterday at Concord’s district court by video feed from the county jail in Boscawen. He’s facing charges of felonious sexual assault and burglary. Mandigo, who stood still as prosecutor Tracy Connolly detailed the case against him, told the judge he didn’t have anything to say in relation to his bail.

Long history of sex crimes

When arguing for the high cash bail, Connolly detailed Mandigo’s long history of sexual-related crimes, including several indecent exposure convictions dating back to 1995.

Before Friday’s arrest, Mandigo was most recently arrested in August 2012 after several women at the Marshall’s on Storrs Street reported that he had tried to point his cell phone up their skirts to snap pictures. Mandigo was found guilty of three counts of attempted violation of privacy, but his sentence of one year at the county jail was deferred on good behavior. Connolly said yesterday that she had filed a motion to impose that sentence.

Mandigo was arrested for a similar incident in 2008 at Target in which the police said he stuck a cell phone up a woman’s dress. He was arrested in 2005 by the Hooksett police after the police said he peered into the changing room of the Kohl’s junior area. He also exposed himself in Kohl’s and masturbated, the police said at the time.

O’Malley said officers at the police department are aware of Mandigo because of his previous criminal history, a fact that helped them quickly apprehend him Friday. O’Malley said a dispatcher suggested Mandigo as a possible suspect after hearing the detailed description given by the 11-year-old girl’s mother. Shortly after that initial report, an officer responded to Mandigo’s home at 444½ N. State St. and felt that the engine and headlights on his vehicle were warm, according to the affidavit.

The mother had described the intruder as wearing athletic pants with three white stripes down the side and an olive green sweatshirt or coat, and according to the police that responding officer saw an olive green sweatshirt in the back of Mandigo’s vehicle.

Detective Sean Ford first made contact with Mandigo about 7 a.m. Friday, at which time he said he had been asleep since about 1:15 a.m., according to the affidavit. A neighbor later told Ford, though, that he knows someone was awake in Mandigo’s apartment at exactly 4:02 a.m. that morning because he had woken up when someone in the apartment dropped something on the floor.

Evidence discovered

Mandigo allowed officers to search his home, and Ford said he found a pair of pants in the man’s bedroom that matched the pair described by the mother. Mandigo told Ford that he hadn’t worn either the pants or the green sweatshirt found in his car recently, according to the detective’s affidavit.

Meanwhile, another detective had found fingerprints on the inside of a window frame at the family’s home, according to the affidavit. At about 2:30 p.m. Friday those prints were matched to Mandigo, the police said. Soon after, Ford spoke with Mandigo, who told him he was about to take a ride on his motorcycle.

“Mandigo would not tell me where he was going but stated that he would have his cell phone on him,” Ford wrote in the affidavit. “At that point it was decided to immediately arrest Mr. Mandigo due to the imminent threat to the community.”

The police said Mandigo was also tied to the home invasion with the help of a police dog who tracked a scent from the family’s residence to the parking lot at 2½ Beacon St., the building where Connolly said he attends sex offender counseling.

O’Malley said yesterday that he believes Mandigo did not pick this home at random, and he reminded the community to remain vigilant about keeping first-floor windows locked.

“If you speculate he was watching this home, then it’s a possibility he knew what windows he could access,” O’Malley said. “We don’t think he just showed up there on a whim and got lucky.”

(Tricia L. Nadolny can be reached at 369-3306 or tnadolny@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @tricia_nadolny.)